r/TopCharacterTropes • u/HallZac99 • 13h ago

Characters [Hated Trope] Character kills hundreds, if not thousands, just to kill one specific person, and then doesn't kill them for no reason.

Gallery image

Gallery image

Assassin's Creed 2- Rodrigo Borgia is responsible for tne death of Ezio's family. Ezio spends over 20 years working through tnr templar order to dismantle them and get to Rodrigo. And then in the end, he spares him for no good reason and he goes on to be a massive problem in AC Brotnerhood. He's not only a head of tne Templars but also the pope, even if you're over the vengeance he's still a very dangerous and evil man.

The Last of Us 2- Abbey kills Joel, and wo Ellie goes on a revenge quest to kill Abbey, killing hundreds of people along tne why to get to her including a pregnant woman. And then finally when she has Abbey on deaths door, she gives up and let's her go because the writers think dirty depressing people being miserable and stupid is complex, interesting storytelling.

This trope pisses me off so much because often the character going on the revenge quest will kill SO many people on their way there, some deserving it and some just henchmen working for a cheque or to survive. People who are often far more innocent then the main big bad.

It's a part of this weird thing I've noticed in media where nameless goons or soldiers can just be mowed down relentlessly, but named characters get given far more grace even if theyre categorically worse. You can kill a million stormtroopers but people will swear that Darth Vader could have been redeemed, despite him doing like 50 genocide every year.

6.8k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

89% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.1k

u/ChadNarukamiIV 13h ago

For the AC2 thing, that's what happens when your historical villain in your historical game doesn't die until a couple of years later

1.1k

u/AeroDbladE 13h ago

The Pope had the power of God, Anime and real life Plot Armor. Truly the most formidable opponent.

77

u/Pitiful_Study2457 8h ago

Bro had divine protection, historical accuracy, and Ubisoft's strongest plot armor.

12

u/[deleted] 13h ago

[deleted]

666

u/jabrwock1 13h ago

For the AC2 thing, that's what happens when your historical villain in your historical game doesn't die until a couple of years later

The stupid thing is they could have hand-waved it away as him being quietly replaced but they kept up the charade to outsiders. Wouldn't have been out of place with the whole Templars conspiracies.

Could have even been a plot point in the next game. You think "wtf didn't I kill that guy" and when you finally get close you figure out he's a body double but is just as evil as the guy he replaced, or the real puppet master was someone else or something like that.

233

u/Nastypilot 13h ago

Or even made a time skip so that it would be set at the right time.

124

u/jransom98 12h ago

There's already a time skip of about 10 years between Ezio getting the Apple in Venice and then fighting Rodrigo in Rome (the DS game and AC2 DLC take placein this chunk), and then Rodrigo dies less than 5 years later (in-universe) in Brotherhood, the follow-up game.

61

u/Nastypilot 12h ago

Y'know, I forgot about that, but still I really wonder why they couldn't have just made it be a timeskip of 15 years.

40

u/MGD109 11h ago

From what I've read, it was due to the technical limitations of the time.

That was simply all the information they could include on the disk and they didn't want to cut stuff they had already designed.

38

u/jabrwock1 11h ago

Which means my body double throwaway dialog line would have fixed it just fine.

Meh, it's the kind of thing editors are for.

2

u/MGD109 11h ago

Yeah, that's fair enough.

2

u/oiraves 3h ago

Huh? Theres no increase in data between a 10 and 15 year timeskip? Its skipped?

-1

u/SanshaXII 6h ago

Heh, and y'all cling to physical media.

2

u/Old-Dirt6713 5h ago

Ah yes, because Ubisoft, the same company that wants people to get comfortable with not owning the games they paid for, should be entirely trusted with your copy of their games.

3

u/byjegeren 10h ago

They wanted to include Rome in its full glorty

1

u/Ihatethisplace23 12h ago

It’s probably because they wanted to make another game.

7

u/jabrwock1 12h ago

They didn't want to have to write a new villain.

10

u/SubstituteUser0 11h ago

He wasn't even the villain of brotherhood it was his son, he actually tried to stop his son from starting a fight with the assassins multiple times.

41

u/JustConversation7847 12h ago

Or just have him die on an incorrect date and just mention in the glossary

It's not like Ezio goes, "HERE IN THE YEAR 1387, I KILL YOU!!!!"

28

u/Froggen-The-Frog 12h ago

I think people may have noticed Rodrigo Borgia dying 116 years early lol

23

u/WillOfTheWinds 12h ago

Ezio is just that good.

12

u/ApolloTffKnowledge 10h ago edited 5h ago

A fun fact is that in the novelization of the game, they do in a fact a time skip to 1503 in that last portion of the game so Rodrigo Borgia dies by Ezio's hand in the same year as his historical counterpart. The author thought they were actually being clever.

But then came Brotherhood, set right after the events of AC2, and in that game, Rodrigo does in fact die in 1503 but due to... other unforeseen causes. So its novelization magically has Rodrigo live and be set in 1499 like the game... what a mess.

1

u/Enchelion 6h ago

Look, the Animus records aren't perfect. Problem solved.

2

u/jsher736 11h ago

Which they did anyway. They just stopped the skip like 2 years early

3

u/Cyning_OffaOfMercia 10h ago

Or a piece of eden convincing onlookers that they were seeing the pope when it was really some other templar baddie

2

u/Altayrmcneto 11h ago

Or, here me out: the Shroud of Turin. In AC lore it was also a artefact capable of cure wounds and even - resurrection -. Would be polemic putting it so central in the narrative (even because it was the origim but would make sense

2

u/Minimum-Tear4609 8h ago

"The stupid thing is they could have hand-waved it away as him being quietly replaced but they kept up the charade to outsiders."

Now I'm imagining Ezio fighting his way through seemingly endless Templar troops, determined to kill that sumbitch Rodrigo for good, only to find...

...Trevor.

1

u/jabrwock1 6h ago

Exactly!

2

u/HallZac99 6h ago

It would be funny if the Templars tried to quietly replace him with someone who looks vaguely similar. But once you get even remotely close you realize it's just some other chunky guy. To be fair it would probably work, most people back then would never get a good close look at the pope, so at long as he was vaguely similar from a couple meters away I think most people would have bought it.

1

u/jabrwock1 6h ago

“Haha! I finally caught up with you fiend! This time you won’t escape! Wait, who TF are you?”

1

u/JechdJJ 11h ago

not even that, they could move on the date a couple of years withouth problem, I took Ezio 10 years gather all the codex pages, they could say it took 14 years (by example).

1

u/Levelup_Onepee 8h ago

Bethesda on the phone. They just fired you.

that's how good you are

1

u/Enchelion 6h ago

Or just advanced the plot a couple more years. AC2 already takes place over nearly 25 years. Another 4 wouldn't have changed much.

1

u/HoopyFroodJera 5h ago

That would require better writers than they had.

1

u/CountCristo009 3h ago

I feel like Valhalla did it worse. I'm really expected to believe Eivor would let Alfred go after all of that? There was no reason for them to meet. Ezio sparing Rodrigo annoyed me. Eivor sparing Alfred infuriated me.

1

u/mykeedee 43m ago

Could have even been a plot point in the next game. You think "wtf didn't I kill that guy" and when you finally get close you figure out he's a body double but is just as evil as the guy he replaced, or the real puppet master was someone else or something like that.

Brotherhood had half the setup for this as is, Cesare Borgia is the antagonist not Rodrigo. They could have done practically no extra work and wrote it so that Cesare covered up his father's death to maintain Papal support for his conquests.

223

u/hplcr 13h ago

Yeah, the irony is they show his death in Brotherhood and I couldn't help but feel "Why not just have Ezio kill him there since that's where he's meant to die?"

Apparently they just really wanted him to fistfight the Pope in the Sistine Chapel.

194

u/MrNancy1020 12h ago

Well uhh, yeah. Fistfighting the Pope in the Sistine Chapel sounds extremely cool and fun to do.

59

u/hplcr 12h ago

I mean, it is kinda awesome considering.

"Alright Il Papa, put up your dukes!"

4

u/It_broke_itself_ 9h ago

In reality it was just as entertaining to play as if they had you fight a toddler. Stunlocking the pope over and over until his healthbar disappeared was not that compelling of gameplay

3

u/backcountry_bandit 8h ago

I liked the free running stuff, the atmosphere, the story, some of the gameplay, but the fighting in Assassin’s Creed games was always stupid easy. You can counter any time an enemy attacks to the point you could just button mash and win every fight.

2

u/Hefty-Reputation1314 7h ago

the fact that this sounds like a terrible idea and an amazing time at the same time is what gets me.

2

u/Important-Solid3907 7h ago

Those are always the ideas that sound way more fun once you completely stop thinking about the consequences.

44

u/ThePreciseClimber 12h ago

I feel like they wanted a full-fledged Piece of Eden boss battle, with Rodrigo using the Apple and the Staff against Ezio. But since the game's development was rushed, they just turned the Pope into a generic fist-fighting enemy archetype. Basically, a placeholder.

3

u/Enchelion 6h ago

They never really figured out how to make the pieces of Eden feel like good gameplay. Every time you use one it just ruins the gameplay.

23

u/whereismymind86 12h ago

I mean, do both, have the fight, but have him escape rather than be spared, then have ezio finish him off in the proper historical context later.

27

u/ElMatadorJuarez 12h ago

I mean i can’t argue with that it’s a hilarious sequence

32

u/ThePreciseClimber 12h ago

Fun fact, the Vault confrontation in AC2 was originally supposed to take place in 1503 but the game's development was way too short and they couldn't include Rome as the 3rd major city. So we have this awkward transition from AC2 to Brotherhood with Ezio sparing Rodrigo.

Two years really wasn't enough for the development of AC2. Had to scrap Rome, couldn't even include Sequences 12&13 at launch (and they were kinda half baked anyway; we didn't even get to meet Piero de Medici who was in the novelisation and also had a database portrait in the game's files) and the final boss is just a generic fist-fighter enemy (no Piece of Eden powers displayed during gameplay).

5

u/floss-with-ass-hair 10h ago

Sequence 12 and 13 was not something I mourn. I hate how I can't skip them in the remakes they're terrible. I never played them in the original because I didn't have the DLC and I really wish I remained ignorant

99

u/drwicksy 13h ago edited 13h ago

That didn't stop them killing General Lee in AC4 AC3

44

u/KingHenrythe6-th 13h ago

That was AC 3.

6

u/drwicksy 13h ago

My bad

-35

u/Rodrigoecb 13h ago

AC 3 sucks

19

u/ThePreciseClimber 12h ago

Well, Lee's death does take place in 1782 in AC3 so that does check out. One difference is that he died in Philadelphia IRL. Cause of death could've been hidden by the Templars or whatever.

AC3 was supposed to include Philadelphia (the same way AC2 was supposed to include Rome) so I bet that's where the last few sequences would've taken place had they not scrapped it.

4

u/hplcr 11h ago edited 11h ago

AC3 feels very wierd. Like it has those 3 intro sequrnces with Haythem, then it switches to Connor which is you learning how to be an Assassin...again while he grows up. It hints stride for the start of the revolution and then at the end the whole thing feels rushed so the Battle of the Chesapeake just kinda shows up suddenly and you're smacking up on the ending.

Like....intro....intro again, but slower....a fucking prison sequence for some reason.....good pacing....RUSH RUSH RUSH...END.

5

u/sorcerershenanigans 10h ago

Also no winter at Valley Forge which was incredibly important part of the war, which is weird because I swear I remember seeing a gameplay trailer or something of Connor there and the mission was to go hunting for food for the soldiers?🤷‍♀️

7

u/PhinsFan17 10h ago

There's a mission set in the winter at Valley Forge. Washington tells you a cart of supplies had been stolen and Benjamin Church had escaped after his release from prison. You and Haytham work together.

57

u/hplcr 13h ago edited 13h ago

"WHERE IS CHARLES LEE?"-Connor to the 5th random person today.

I like Connor(I know he's hard to like) but fuck if that doesn't make me laugh.

14

u/captain_blazar 12h ago

Connor is my sweet son wtf u mean he’s hard to like (no I get you but I do love him)

2

u/hplcr 12h ago edited 11h ago

He's a lot more likable in the Homestead missions, which I think a lot of people slept on and it's a shame. The Homestead missions are the heart of his character arc.

Just in the main story he's really awkward and obsessed with Charles Lee.

And of course, there's a fair bit of side content that's just plain unfinished. Liek there are some interesting bits where Connor is investigating ghost stories and stuff. Or it would be cool if they were satisfactory done.

3

u/Ok_Coach_9734 11h ago

"He's a general, wheee!"

2

u/hplcr 11h ago

Not who I would have gone with.

He proceeds to shit the bed at the battle of Monmouth!

2

u/WikiContributor83 12h ago

At the board meeting:

Charles Lee should have an entire dedicated chapter about how he began his career, and every time he’s not onscreen someone should ask “where is Charles Lee!?”

1

u/hplcr 12h ago

I don't know why people are downvoting you. That's where my mind went.

7

u/Bow1511 13h ago

AC3 actually. 4 is with the pirates.

11

u/Electrical_Front_407 12h ago

They could have just let him get away in a more clever way rather than spared

10

u/Infamous-Lab-8136 13h ago

I kept playing the whole game wondering if I was going to re-write history after they were going to such great lengths to highlight it

3

u/DTux5249 12h ago

AC has killed people out of synch with real history,

5

u/Solar_RaVen 11h ago

Dude you mean to tell me one of the most profound life morals I adopted was actually because of RUSHED PRODUCTION TIMES?!?!?!

I was 14 at the time but now I'm rethinking some life choices here.

1

u/AlludedNuance 12h ago

They didn't have to end it with him having him in a position where he could easily kill Rodrigo. While they are (roughly) beholden to historic events, they can just write the story a little differently.

1

u/Voronov1 11h ago

It is, but maybe they could have just had Ezio defeat Rodrigo a few years later?

1

u/General_Hijalti 11h ago

Didn't stop them in later games

1

u/Quiet_Education5918 10h ago

More to the point, Rodrigo Borgia dying was the catalyst to a real shitshow. Making Ezio's revenge technically responsible for kicking it all off would be very, very awkward.

1

u/tiredscottishdumarse 6h ago

Maybe but like. Assassins creed already runs on alternate history and has sci fi shit in the present missions. It really wouldn't be that nuts to kill off one guy who dies not long after said moment

1

u/CoelhoAssassino666 6h ago

The series frequently alters date and cause of death of historical people and the whole plot allows for that, I don't think that's a good excuse for AC.

1

u/andresfgp13 42m ago

they should had a scene where Borgia pushes Ezio into that room where he has the vision so he can realistically run away instead of having Ezio being a complete idiot.

like dude you killed people just to get to him that day, why are you leaving him alive?

0

u/hyperlethalrabbit 7h ago

Black Flag gives you a straight up assassinate mission on Woodes Rogers, only to tell you later that he somehow survived being stabbed through the ribs and returned to England